Chapter 1. Logging in to Identity Management from the command line

Identity Management (IdM) uses the Kerberos protocol to support single sign-on. Single sign-on means that the user enters the correct user name and password only once, and then accesses IdM services without the system prompting for the credentials again.

Important

In IdM, the System Security Services Daemon (SSSD) automatically obtains a ticket-granting ticket (TGT) for a user after the user successfully logs in to the desktop environment on an IdM client machine with the corresponding Kerberos principal name. This means that after logging in, the user is not required to use the kinit utility to access IdM resources.

If you have cleared your Kerberos credential cache or your Kerberos TGT has expired, you need to request a Kerberos ticket manually to access IdM resources. The following sections present basic user operations when using Kerberos in IdM.

1.1. Using kinit to log in to IdM manually

This procedure describes using the kinit utility to authenticate to an Identity Management (IdM) environment manually. The kinit utility obtains and caches a Kerberos ticket-granting ticket (TGT) on behalf of an IdM user.

Note

Only use this procedure if you have destroyed your initial Kerberos TGT or if it has expired. As an IdM user, when logging onto your local machine you are also automatically logging in to IdM. This means that after logging in, you are not required to use the kinit utility to access IdM resources.

Procedure

To log in to IdM

under the user name of the user who is currently logged in on the local system, use kinit without specifying a user name. For example, if you are logged in as example_user on the local system:

Optionally, to verify that the login was successful, use the klist utility to display the cached TGT. In the following example, the cache contains a ticket for the example_user principal, which means that on this particular host, only example_user is currently allowed to access IdM services:

1.3. Configuring an external system for Kerberos authentication

This section describes how to configure an external system so that Identity Management (IdM) users can log in to IdM from the external system using their Kerberos credentials.

Enabling Kerberos authentication on external systems is especially useful when your infrastructure includes multiple realms or overlapping domains. It is also useful if the system has not been enrolled into any IdM domain through ipa-client-install.

To enable Kerberos authentication to IdM from a system that is not a member of the IdM domain, define an IdM-specific Kerberos configuration file on the external system.

Prerequisites

The krb5-workstation package is installed on the external system.

To find out whether the package is installed, use the following CLI command: